


More Than You Bargained For

by yourlightningsmile



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU from season 3 episode 1, Drabble, F/M, Morocco - Freeform, Operation Find Jemma, POV Leo Fitz, unexpected reunion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-30
Updated: 2015-10-23
Packaged: 2018-04-24 04:26:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4905424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlightningsmile/pseuds/yourlightningsmile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fitz stumbles into someone he never wanted to see again at the worst possible time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. More Than You Bargained For

**Author's Note:**

> I know I should be working on the epilogue of CYFTB, but after last night's episode, this idea came to me and I couldn't get rid of it. Decided to write a small drabble to get it out of my head and let me write in peace.
> 
> Everything's canon up until Season 3 Ep 1. That's when I played around with an idea that I hope they explore at some point in the show (not in this way, however—this is just for fun).

Fitz distantly reconized that he must be at the end of some kind of emotional tether when the act of getting out of a taxi into the dusty heat of Tangier, Morocco didn't even phase him. He wasn't nervous about disease or wildlife, he couldn't remember the last time he checked his vaccination status, and the idea of someone pick-pocketing him or holding him at gunpoint was almost ludicrous.

He already planned to be subject to those things by some of the most terrifying arms dealers on the continent. Anyone else could just take a number at this point.

Fitz knew, even without the encyclopedic knowledge that he had absorbed via mental osmosis from being around Jemma for so long, that, biologically speaking, it was impossible for your body to run on adrenaline for longer than a day before, chemically, it could no longer sustain consistent levels of output. But he felt as though he'd been in some kind of fight-or-flight-induced head rush for the past three months at least, if not the entire bloody year previous. If Jemma were here, she would gently nag at him to go see a doctor, worried that long-term stress, hyperactivity, and insomnia could be having a negative effect on his heart.

But that was the whole problem. She wasn't here. She wasn't anywhere, scientifically speaking.

_No energy in the universe is created, and none is destroyed._

Fitz stepped into the bustling streets, polymer-lined briefcase bouncing hard against his leg, when he abruptly turned a corner onto a side street. The sign above him said, 'coffee' in Arabic and he weighed whether or not the advantages of having a shock of energy to his system were more important than the inevitable reappearance of some of his tremors after the effects took full force. Thankfully, what with the splinter bombs in his briefcase, he wouldn't need to be a clean shot. It would be better for him to be mentally on top of his game.

He sat down in the shaded, grubby open-air cafe, and stumbled over some unfamiliar words that he hoped conveyed the need for plain coffee, cream, no sugar. He didn't want the crash his usual sweet tooth would have facilitated. Not for something as important as this.

“Ah, cheers,” he mumbled out of habit after the cup was set in front of him, and he handed over a few coins in payment. The owner of the shop already tending to another customer by the time Fitz realized he had mistakenly reverted back to English. The man on the seat beside him glanced over, however, probably taking note of how surripitously foreign he was.

Fitz couldn't bring himself to care what some stranger saw in him.

Fitz thought wistfully of the laugh he would have gotten from Jemma at the face he made as he tipped half of the hot, bitter liquid down his throat in one go--just before scolding him for carelessness with scalding beverages. He'd forgotten how little he actually liked coffee to begin with--not to mention unsweetened--and the taste more than the heat caused him to swear loudly, trying to hold back his splutter of disgust.

“Christ! How in the hell do people drink this...?” he hissed, his voice carrying farther than he intended.

The man on the next stool looked at him fully this time before, surprisingly, speaking to Fitz in English... and with an accent that was shockingly recognizable in a place so far from his home.

“Och, what are the odds? I haven't heard as familiar an accent as that in ages. The Second City, I take it?”

After living inside his own head for so long, Fitz was abruptly thrown out of his thoughts at the unexpected interaction with another human being. He wondered how to make this interactionas brief as possible, perhaps just walking off without acknowledging the comment? It's not like he would ever see the bloke again, anyway.

However, the man had deduced that Fitz was Glaswegian from just a few syllables, and seemed friendly enough. And Jemma would never have let him get away with being that rude to anyone. He compromised by responding with the minimum effort necessary, giving a generic grunt and nod in the affirmative.

His companion obviously didn't catch on to the rebuff. He responded a loudly, “What finds you all the way in Africa? Oh, sorry... should introduce myself first.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Fitz watched as the man wiped his hand off on a napkin before presenting it.

“Dr. Donnan Fitz. Nice to meet you.”

Fitz whipped around in shock, his attention finally seized firmly against his will, and looked at the man. Truly looked at him. At a vague burst of recognition, Fitz felt his stomach plummet so far, it was probably residing with Jemma in...well, wherever she was.

Unless she'd...

No. Fitz had never let the thought form fully in his mind. He wasn't about to begin now. And this? This couldn't be happening. His father had disappeared. Just vanished slowly from his and his mother's lives what felt like eons ago. And after searching everywhere and contacting everyone who knew him, a lonely, troubled teenage Fitz had forced himself to accept that his father didn't exist anymore, at least not to them.

But now...

_No energy in the universe is created, and none is destroyed._

 


	2. Implications

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fitz has a conversation with his long-lost father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for the kind response that I've received for such a small blurb of a chapter based on a spur-of-the-moment idea. I wish I could say that I now suddenly have a fully-formed plan for this story, but, unfortunately, this one looks like it will be more of a touch-and-go kind of thing. However, after having no idea if I would be able to continue this past the initial drabble, I now have a loose plot for how this could continue in my head and believe I will be playing around with it for at least a few more chapters.
> 
> Hope you guys enjoy the ride with me. :)

The man sitting in front of Fitz had very few similarities with the image he had conjured up of his father over the years, created partly from memory but moreso from his attempts to fill in the gaps where memory had faded into a dark expanse of anger and absence.

There was no spark of recognition in the elder Fitz' eyes. He didn't realize. Donnan Fitz had no idea he was sitting not two feet from his own flesh and blood. At this thought, Fitz worked to control his anger. He had other, vastly more important things to be focusing on. Why was this happening now? Or ever, for that matter? He thought he had laid this to rest a long time ago.

Fitz had gotten his introduction to the sciences from his father, and subsequently his love of the subject, though he'd worked incredibly hard to divorce the two in his mind over the years. Their specialties had been different, as his father had been more interested in research and theory, while Fitz discovered that he needed a tangible outcome for all of his hard work.

Bold, gregarious, strong, and logical to a fault, Fitz' dad had been everything that Fitz had wanted to be when he was a young boy—and everything that Fitz had quickly realized he wasn't. He'd wondered not just a few times if he would have been more like his dad if the elder Fitz had stuck around.

The blunt, raucous, sandy haired man in Fitz' memories had transformed into an older, slightly more tanned, weathered, and greying version of himself. Fitz took note, however, that his father was now clean-shaven, wearing glasses that he hadn't needed before and looking for the world as if sitting in open-air cafes in foreign countries was par for the course of a Wednesday morning.

 _For all I know, it is_ , Fitz thought.

Hand still extended towards Fitz, but realizing as time passed that the young man had no intention of shaking it, the senior Dr. Fitz withdrew the offer, likely confused by the less-than-neutral expression on Fitz' face. He was not deterred, however, changing tacts as he noticed the suit and tie Fitz was wearing.

“Ah, here for work, are ya, lad? Rough trip, was it? Jet lag's the devil when you have a job to do. I would know—been just about everywhere there is to go at this point.” He smiled.

In response, a sardonic laugh, just bordering on the edge of hysterical, tumbled from Fitz lips as the engineer fought to control his temper at the bitter irony of that statement.

“R-rough?” Fitz ground out—damning his faulty neurons straight to hell for firing incorrectly just when he needed his self-confidence the most, “I s-s-suppose you could say that.” He fought to control himself, his palms coming up to rub at his eyes as though he could wipe away the imprint of his father's face on his optical nerves.

Donnan Fitz continued, “My wife gets it the worst sometimes. We both travel for a living, but she changes time zones less than I do. When she does, though, she becomes an absolute zombie, that one. But of course it's worth it to see the world, I'm sure you agree.” He chuckled good-naturedly.

“W-worth it, y-yeah. I'll b-b-bet it is.” Fitz struggled to speak around the knot that had formed in his chest at the implications of this statement.

It was clear that the senior Dr. Fitz had no idea what to do with the fellow Scot who was slowly unravelling in front of him. When Fitz finally forced himself to look up again, he caught the tail edge of an unmistakable expression on his father's face—pity. Pity for the stumbling, stuttering young man in the seat next to him who was obviously unwell.

Fitz saw red. If there was ever a look he never wanted to see from anyone in his life ever again, it was pity. Not about his brain, not about his stutter, and especially not coming from the man who had walked out on his family without so much as a 'see you never'.

Fitz tossed back the second half of his now only mildly hot coffee, slamming the mug back on the wood and forcing his trembling fingers to let go of the mug's glazed surface, where it now rested next to the briefcase in front of him. Suddenly he stilled, launched back into the present at the sight of it, reminded of the focus he had temporarily lost.

He felt more awake than he had in a long time.

 _This didn't matter._ Seeing his father again didn't matter. Humiliating himself didn't matter. Finding out why his father left didn't matter. Being angry didn't matter.

Jemma. Jemma mattered. Fitz felt an eerie calm spread over him. He turned to his dad.

“Yeah, it's been a little rough,” he pronounced slowly, words suprisingly whole and uninhibited, “But, then again, I haven't had the same kinds of experiences that you obviously have. What is it you do anyway?”

Likely relieved at his conversation partner's return to normalcy, the elder Dr. Fitz appeared to relax, and answered easily, “Oh, well, I'm a geologist, technically, but I dabble in anthropology and archaeology in my spare time.” Fitz nodded absently at this unsurprising information.

“I've been developing the research from my doctoral studies and presenting at various conferences. I'm heading to one this morning, actually, but I can't get started without a cuppa, I'm sure you understand.” He gestured to his cup of tea with the casual assurance of a well-travelled, highly-educated man without a care in the world. Fitz fought back a wave of disgust.

“What about you, mate? I don't think I caught your name.”

“Ah, well, see, that's because I didn't mention it,” Fitz began to breathe heavily, standing up and moving away from the stool he'd been sitting on and the man who had been testing his temper with every word he spoke and movement he made.

He scratched at his head absentmindedly. “It's a crazy coincidence, you see. My name's Fitz, too. Leopold Fitz.”

The words felt as though they had travelled up from his lungs as fully-formed anvils, the heaviness of them almost sinking him into the ground before he could manage to speak them.

In the silent seconds after, Fitz stared hard at the man opposite him, willing the connection to sink in. The reaction was delayed, but the crease of confusion that had formed on his father's face slowly fell into an expression of shock and recognition. But Fitz had other places to be and other people that he cared about. He had no desire to stick around.

If he had been a stronger man, he would have just left it at that and walked away, not another word spoken. But, whether it was his mother's influence, or Jemma's, or his own cursed sentimentality, the words slipped out of his mouth before he could hold them back.

“See you never, Dad.” He swung the briefcase off of the counter and strode out into the dusty, foreign street.


	3. Opportunity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fitz fields a phone call from his mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even though we're likely going to know what is happening to Jemma and how the team (*cough* Fitz *cough*) goes about trying to rescue her in about six hours, I decided to go ahead and post a chapter today anyway. Since the story's already AU, I thought I might as well go all in and own it. As a result, the Jemma situation will almost definitely veer from what will be canon, and will likely stay that way moving forward. Hope you enjoy anyway. :)

A dull, monotonous tone sounded in the thick silence, jarring Fitz where he sat slumped on the floor, exhausted, back against the surprisingly warm—yet still infuriatingly solid—stone.

Was it finally reacting? Was he about to learn Jemma's fate? Experience it himself?

No. He forced his breath to calm. It was just his phone, forgotten, vibrating in his left trouser pocket.

Fitz had the impulse to simply ignore it in favor of continuing to lie there numbly, but his muscle memory was too strong. His arm had already pulled out the thin rectangle of metal and glass, which was currently lighting up with the only name other than Jemma's that could have caused him any sort of emotional response.

 _Mum_.

Fitz felt a momentary wave of horror and guilt wash over him. If the stone had engulfed him as he'd wanted minutes before, who knew if his mother would ever have heard from him again. She would receive a call just like the one Coulson was going to make to the Simmonses, except she would have to deal with the knowledge that her son had chosen to put himself in a potentially fatal situation and that he had done it without even thinking about her or communicating with her in any way.

 _That's not true, though_ , the thought formed in his mind as if it had come from someone else. Coulson would have lied, Fitz was sure of it, rather than let an aging, single mother feel as though her only son had committed suicide without so much as a note.

Shame flooded him, and he knew he would have to call her back. She deserved that. But not here. He needed to collect himself first.

Fitz typed a quick text, letting his mother know he would call her in an hour and receiving a poor attempt at a smiley-face emoticon in response. Standing slowly, he knew he couldn't let the team find out that he had broken into the monolith if at all possible. Thank God the stone had been placed in a reinforced, mostly soundproof underground room or the gunshots and his yells would have had the entire compound down there long ago.

Fitz struggled to his feet, body sore from the constant tension he had been under throughout the day and weeks previous. Stepping down from the bulletproof containment box, he slowly swung the door shut again. He looked around for the locks that had held the container closed, ones that Fitz himself had meticulously chosen after reviewing the security footage and discovering the awful truth of his bumbling contribution to Jemma's disappearance.

He had blamed the locks so he wouldn't keep blaming himself.

Fitz found them in pieces, mangled from the heat and pressure of a bullet's strike. Thankfully, he'd ordered them in bulk a long time ago in case they ever needed replacements. Striding over to a cardboard box that had been hastily shoved under a nearby table, he snagged two new locks and fixed them in place, containing the monolith once again. Grabbing the gun he had tossed aside, Fitz made his way out of the room, readjusting the tumbler on the door he had kicked down and hastily sticking the caution tape back into place across it. _Good enough_ , he thought.

Replacing the used ammunition, he hung the gun back in its rightful place and made his way directly to the room that held the Plaground's security footage. Hastily copying the last hour of the basement's video surveillance to a flash drive, Fitz deleted the files and the log in the main computer. It was messy and wouldn't fool anyone, least of all Skye— _Daisy_ , Fitz reminded himself—who could likely recover the data in less than a minute, but hiding his actions wasn't Fitz' intention. He wouldn't lie about where he had been and what he had been doing, he just didn't want to draw any attention to the event if it could be avoided.

That taken care of, Fitz slowed his pace as he made his way back to the makeshift residential section of the bunker. Passing few people, he nodded curtly at each one before reaching his room and locking himself in.

He needed a shower. Fitz didn't think he could talk to his mum while covered in the dust, sweat, and blood of the day. He turned the tap as far as it would go, until steam rose and filled the tiny, tiled enclosure with misty heat. Then, once he had divested himself of the grimy shirt and trousers, he gingerly stepped into the scalding water and scrubbed himself clean of the physical remnants of his foreign travel and emotional breakdown.

After drying himself off and putting on fresh clothes, Fitz felt slightly more capable of calling his mother back. Plopping into his chair, the sight of Jemma smiling from the photo atop his desk caused him a moment's pause before he firmly tore his gaze away and deliberately tapped his mother's icon on the list of recently received calls.

His mum answered on the second ring, her soft, lilting accent barely audible over the connection.

“Leo?”

“Hi, mum.”

“This can't possibly be my boy, he never remembers to call back on time, always up to his ears in something or other.” He could see his mother's proud, but slightly chastising smile in his head.

“I'm sorry mum, I haven't meant to wait so long to call, but...”

“I know, and it's alright. It's just, usually I can text Jemma and she'll let me know you're both doing okay and send me a picture of whatever new brilliant gadget you've managed to invent over the weekend. But she hasn't been responding either, and I've been getting a bit worried.”

Fitz knew this was probably a huge understatement, but there was nothing he felt he could do to relieve her tension except come home for a visit. If he did, however, there was no hiding what had happened, and, in addition to not wanting to say the words out loud, he hadn't wanted to lose a second of precious time doing anything else but figuring out where Jemma was and bringing her back. Fitz had told himself weeks ago that when he had found her they would take time off together. An extended vacation where they could go visit both of their families. Maybe even make it an early sabbatical. And they would have their dinner. He would make sure of it. But time had stretched on, Jemma had remained elusive, and Fitz couldn't bring himself to admit the truth, so he had avoided contact with everyone.

His mother hadn't finished. “But, after the phone call I received today, it all started to make sense, and I wanted to check on you and...make sure you're okay.”

Fitz had been half-listening, churning through excuses to explain away his and Jemma's radio silence, when what she said finally made its way fully into his brain, distracting him.

“Wait. What do you mean, phone call? What phone call?” Had Coulson contacted Jemma's family already? And then, for good measure, decided to call his mum, too, leaving Fitz no choice but to 'begin to move on' as the director has so plainly put it? A stone settled in Fitz' abdomen at the thought that his mother was calling to console him over Jemma's...over Jemma's...

... _death_. His body rebelled at the thought, and he fought an urge to gag.

“It was so unexpected...,” his mother was still saying, “...but when he told me you had run into each other—and in Africa no less—I knew that you must've been keeping silent because you didn't want to tell me you were searching for him. Were you worried it would upset me?”

Fitz reoriented, relief and a different kind of disgust replacing the nausea.

“Dad,” he repeated flatly, “Dad called you?”

“It was strange. I didn't even recognize that it was him at first, and, when it finally sank in, I couldn't imagine why on earth he would reach out now, after all this time, until he told me about your...well, your _meeting_ earlier today. He asked after you. Wanted to know if you were okay. He left his phone number and asked me to give it to you. I told him I would pass it on, but only if you wanted it.”

Fitz was more concerned with her at the moment.

“Are you okay, mum? I can't believe he called you. I should call him back and let him have it just for that.”

“No, no, Leo. No," she sighed, "I know that I wasn't in a great place for a really long time after he left, but its long past. Please don't ever feel like you need to hide any desire to see your father again from me.”

“I don't, mum. And I haven't been. Looking for him, I mean. I didn't even expect to see him. The team has been on a very important project—you know, non-disclosure agreement, lots of late nights, that kind of thing. It's been non-stop. I was in Africa this morning to get some...expert advice from a bloke there on the history of a type of material that I'm not familiar with. I ran into dad when I went to get some...breakfast,” he stumbled over his words, careful to avoid outright lies but ensure that he kept his cover in place. His mother knew he worked with the US government, but SHIELD protocol required him to maintain the lie that he worked at a research-only scientific development facility.

“I tried not to let seeing him get to me," Fitz continued, “but he didn't recognize me at first, and I... my temper got the best of me,” he admitted quietly.

To Fitz' surprise, his mother chuckled, “Ah, yes, your temper. I've not liked being on the end of it myself over the years, so I can only imagine how blindsided _he_ was by it. No wonder he called.”

When Fitz didn't respond, she continued, “Alright, well I know how busy you are. You've appeased your old mum, now. I'll let you get back to blowing things up or whatever it is you do in that job of yours. But will you promise to call a little more often?” The words were spoken lightly, hesitantly, but Fitz could tell how much they actually meant to her.

“Of course, mum. I promise," he hoped he wasn't lying to her, "And you're sure you're okay?”

“Truly, sweetheart, I'm fine. And besides, even if I wasn't, Marie and your uncle are just a quick pop down the road. I'm going over there tonight anyway to help decorate a cake for your cousin's birthday."

Fitz smiled slightly, “I'm glad, mum. Have a great time. Hi to the family.”

“I'll let them know. Now, before you go, don't forget to take care of yourself...and Jemma. Sounds like she's just as caught up in this project as you are. I know the work you two do is important, but you make sure that girl gets her rest. I love you. Oh, and if you ever want your dad's number, I'll keep it here for you. Just let me know.”

“Love you, too, mum,” Fitz' said gruffly, and his phone gave a beep as the line disconnected. He leaned back until the front legs of his chair left the ground, rubbing his forehead.

He would have to tell her. Eventually. And he would need try to start thinking about the idea of moving on, whatever that meant...

Maybe tomorrow.

Glancing at his clock, Fitz noted that the lab should have cleared out for the day, and realized that he had never packed up his things. Purely out of habit—which were mostly due to Jemma's complaints over the years about 'careless' peers who left the lab cluttered for her to clean up in the morning—he walked mechanically back through the halls and the glass panel doors that he had vacated so rashly earlier in the day. Approaching his desk, he began to grab the loose papers that had been scattered around and shove them messily into his top desk drawer. (The clutter Jemma couldn't see, Jemma didn't know about.) As he shut the drawer with slightly more momentum than was strictly necessary, he heard an object roll off of his desk and land with a light thunk on the floor. Fitz bent to pick it up when he noticed what it was.

It was the tube that the unhelpful Hebrew scroll had come in.

He had the sudden urge to throw it bodily across the room or burn it or something equally destructive and satisfying, and he gripped it hard in his hand to stem the frustrated urge. Once he let it go however, his hand was riddled with red marks where the the bumpy, yet intricate, design had left a pattern into the skin of his hand.

Though the imprint was fast fading back into the usual topography of his palm, Fitz couldn't miss the pattern that had emerged.

Curious, he found a magnifying glass and held it up over the carved wooden valleys and notches. They weren't symmetrical, as he had initially thought, but neither were they random. It must have been painstakingly hand-carved.

Why on earth had someone gone to all this trouble to carve out a tube just to store a useless piece of paper within it?

In a fit of sleep-deprived and desperate inspiration, he grabbed a blank piece of paper and practically dismantled the supply cabinet looking for anything liquid and indelible. Grabbing a tray, he poured the acquired chemicals into it and rolled the tube around until the entire cylinder was coated. Careful to grab the stained cylinder by its ends, Fitz laid it on the blank paper and began rolling it gently like a stamp until a pattern emerged and began to repeat, fading out as the makeshift ink was used up.

His heart burning inside his chest, Fitz pulled the paper up under the light of his desk lamp, squinting hard. He didn't want to get his hopes up, but he couldn't help the spark of excitement that ignited when he looked at the result.

It was a message. The one he had been hunting for.

 


	4. Progress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Coincidences. Oh, the coincidences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've discovered that I'm basically Coulson with how often I mistyped 'Daisy' as 'Skye' while writing this chapter. I even had to put a search filter on it while editing to make sure I didn't miss any. :P Hashtag multi-named character problems.

The pattern had begun to swim in front of Fitz' eyes, which felt gritty and bloodshot from the strain of trying to decipher the unintelligible...were they even symbols? Fitz couldn't be sure, but one thing he _was_ sure of was that there was no way in hell he was stopping until he figured it out.

Unable to sleep since the euphoria of his discovery, Fitz was half-slumped over his desk, left arm propped on a stack of books, holding his head up as he squinted to focus despite the glare of his tablet. The scholarly article he was trying to decipher had obviously been photocopied by someone who had no idea how to calibrate simple machinery, resulting in the slightly blurry PDF he was now wading through muddily.

 _You'd think that the fact that this is supposed to be useful, educational information would prompt some kind of quality control_ , he groused internally.

Great, he thought, now he sounded like Simmons back at the Academy when they had been writing research papers, going on and on about the preservation of knowledge for future generations and the importance of accurate record maintenance—a time when he couldn't have cared less about the state of old manuscripts, wanting instead to focus solely on the twenty-first century relevance of their designs. He supposed he was paying for his apathetic attitude now.

His foot was tapping with impatience. He gave in and glanced at the clock for what felt like the thousandth time that night. 05:24. He had wanted to wake up Daisy for the past three hours, but had stopped himself at the last minute. After the talk Coulson had had with him that past afternoon, Fitz couldn't risk coming across as crazed or obssessive to anyone who could potentially relay it back to the director. In order for the team to take this new development seriously, Fitz was going to have to appear calm and rational. Logical. Casually curious about the results of his Moroccan raid. But, truthfully, he felt every second lost in the pit of his stomach and absently wondered if it was possible to lose his mind while he waited.

He remembered hearing a professor at uni—long before he joined the academy or met Jemma—give a lecture on the scientific process. He had emphasized the slow, methodical nature of experimentation and declared that science and emotion were enemies, each impeding the other and progress as a whole. To be the best scientist one could be, he had said, an individual had to maintain nothing more than a gentle interest and curiosity surrounding a subject and be open to all results, even ones that were ultimately negative. Even ones that proved the experiment had failed.

Fitz had never liked that professor. And a fat lot of good that advice had done for him—especially now. Because he _was_ emotional and there was only one result in this situation that was acceptable to him and he wanted it so badly he physically ached.

Later, Fitz would chalk it up to sheer exhaustion and lack of willpower, but he folded his arms in front of him and laid his head atop them, giving into one of the most dangerous activities that he had been wont to take part in when progress had slowed and he felt defeated. He fantasized.

About finding Jemma. The method didn't matter. His brain had defaulted to a fuzzy, abstract, science-fiction-stroke-Doctor-Who-influenced idea of pulling her bodily out of the rock and directly into his arms. He dreamed about the wave of relief that would overwhelm him and the grateful smile and perhaps even tears that would be on her face as she clung to him. His dreams dipped into slightly unrealistic territory, given that they had not yet even had that first date, but he couldn't imagine letting her out of his sight after finding her. He pictured climbing into bed behind her on the first night that she was home—his, hers, it didn't matter—slipping his arms around her waist to hold her close and, finally, allowing himself to sleep as deeply and for as long as his body allowed, knowing that when he opened his eyes in the morning her face would be right next to his. Then, with muted sunlight casting shadows through the opaque glass window, they would talk and sleep and laze around under the covers as much as they liked and just be together.

Fitz had never let his mind go any farther than that, realizing how perilous it would be to teeter over the edge and lose focus on the act of actually getting her there. But in the early hours of this morning, feeling more hope than he had in the last month, his unconscious mind gave into his desires, and, in the haze of a kind of half-sleep, Fitz imagined leaning over and brushing Jemma's lips with his, running his hands slowly up and down her sides and pulling her as close as he could. she reciprocated, mouth parting and arms sliding around him to press her body against his. His hand came up to brush against her hair, cool and smoothe through his fingers, and she let out a breathy moan as their mouths parted.

He was panting now, hands gripping her hips through soft fabric and kissing his way down the side of her neck, awestruck that they were finally to this point and she was allowing this to happen, enjoying it even, when the dream evaporated in the wake of an unwelcome long and loud beep from the PCR machine across the lab, signaling the end of its cycle. Jolted out of the blissful daze, Fitz located the origin of the sound, realizing that one of the other scientists must have scheduled an overnight analysis on one of the genome samples of inhuman DNA that were becoming more and more prevalent in the wake of the fish oil recall. Fitz both cursed and blessed the interruption, rubbing his hands harder than necessary over his eyes in a desperate effort to collect his runaway thoughts and curb his reaction to the ultimate temptation. The last thing he needed was to lose his grip on reality again and start hallucinating. But as the familiar reality of Jemma's absence set in again, Fitz' chest began to feel tight, and he blearily unlocked his tablet to distract himself from the pangs of longing that lingered even now.

The universe must have felt his despair because, not ten minutes later, a shuffling noise could be heard through the glass door that Fitz had long ago left propped open, and a groggy but fresh-faced Daisy appeared around the corner, wearing workout clothes and in the progress of wrapping one of her wrists with a long, thin strip of black fabric.

“Oh, thank god,” Fitz proclaimed, jumping up out of his seat and jogging over to the door.

“Daisy!” he called after her, trying not to startle her, but so grateful to see her that he could have shouted.

She turned at the sound. “Fitz,” she gave him a surprised smile, “I didn't expect anyone else to be up quite this early.” She trailed off a little, slight concern appearing in her features as she registered his rumpled clothing and fatigued expression.

“Or should I say, this late?” she remarked, “You...look like you've been up all night.” She walked towards him where he was propped in the doorway.

“I have. But that's not important. What's important is _this_.” He drug her over to his desk, grabbing the sheet bearing the stamped message that had been lying amongst his paper-filled workspace, and launched into an explanation of exactly what had transpired the night before, ending his monologue with a hurried, “....but you've got to admit, it looks very intentional. It has to be a message. It has to.”

As the room fell into silence, his eyes nervously roamed over her face, looking for any sense of agreement or acceptance as she scanned the page in front of her—and not the longsuffering, pitying kind that, though she was one of his closest friends, had made him bristle with anger this past year.

Thankfully, when her face turned to him, it held only wonder and hope, “Fitz. This...this really looks like something, doesn't it?” Her voice was breathless, and Fitz was reminded of how much Skye—Daisy—cared about Jemma, too. He felt a momentary wave of shame for forgetting.

“Yeah,” he said, “Apart from the symbols, from which language I haven't been able to identify yet, it looks like some kind of skewed grid system, but I haven't been able to link it with anything yet. Is there any way you could run a pattern recognition analysis on this and cross-reference it with...well, hopefully it won't require sifting through the entire internet, but starting with all government research and any scholarly databases that contain historical anthropological data on South American tribes and then working your way out from there?”

Daisy looked a little overwhelmed at his rapid-fire queries, but smiled fondly at him, conceding, “Well, I don't know about the whole internet, but if you can give me a list of databases to start on, I can code a program to do some shape matching across the. And I can add in some restricted governmental research databases just for kicks.”

The smile that Fitz cracked at these words shouldn't have felt as unnatural as it did residing on his face. Still, at Daisy's urging, it carried him through the hallways and straight to bed, where he fell asleep instantly, secure in the knowledge that a computer would be churning while he slept, leading him ever closer to finding the woman he loved.

\-----

“Fitz, do you have a second?” Daisy called out a week later, striding into the lab with a laptop balanced on her arm.

Fitz looked up from where he had been testing various potential wiring systems for a new microscopic tracker that Coulson had asked him to build. When he saw Daisy, he breathed deeply, tamping down the stray hope that always struggled to make itself known when she was around these days. He had known going into this that the pattern search would churn up numerous faulty hits and loads of similar yet unrelated data, but every time she walked into the room Fitz had to fight the jolt of fear and hope that maybe this time a potentially useful piece of information had been found.

It was strange, however, that Daisy was coming to him now, not later in the evening to begin what had become their usual 'post-dinner analysis rundown'.

“I know things like this have happened before, and I don't want to cause a fuss, but I thought you should see this as soon as possible.” She plopped the laptop down in front of him, and swiped at the mouse, illuminating the screen to reveal a file that the program had pulled, an article on a bit of rock that had been discovered during a year-long archaological project down the lower section of the Yucatán Peninsula. The location alone had him on alert. What drew his attention even more, though, were the colored outlines the computer had generated, highlighting the shape of several of the grainy carvings pictured beneath the text. Daisy's voice rang out.

“Seven shape matches, Fitz. Not just two or three like the top results we have been getting. Seven.” Her head nodded once in emphasis, eyes bright with nervousness and anticipation. Fitz grabbed the computer and pulled it closer to him, magnifying the tiny printed text.

“Oh my god. This is it,” Fitz breathed, his heartbeat accellerating until he felt as though it were pounding out of his chest. “A lead. A _real_ lead. The men who worked on this dig...they've got to know something. They have to.” He looked up at the brunette in front of him. “What were the exact dates of the project? Who were the lead scientists? Do you know if they published any of their findings?”

Daisy made a calming gesture, “Woah, slow down, tiger. I'm excited, too, but I know just as much as you do at the moment—actually, if we're being totally honest, I don't know nearly that much—but I can run a quick search and have the results emailed to you. I'll start by locating the people involved in the dig, and then we can build more thorough parameters if we need to.” She balanced herself on the edge of his desk, humming lightly under her breath as she typed. He tried not to fidgit, albeit unsuccessfully, and occupied himself with pulling up the article on his own. Eventually, an alert on his tablet sounded, and Daisy quickly tossed her laptop on a nearby cart, returning to hover over Fitz' shoulder as he perused the first collection of results.

He began sifting through the ist rom the top, quickly eliminating scientists that he didn't believe had the right credentials, specialties, or in-depth experience to provide him with the kind of information he was looking for. He swiped at their names, placed their profiles in a subfolder to contact only if necessary. One or two promising individuals surfaced however, and as he flagged them for further interest, Daisy spoke.

“Huh, well that's a coincidence. I don't ever think I've heard of another person with the last name Fitz before,” she giggled, her eyebrows moving up and down, “And he's a doctor! Maybe he's your long-lost uncle or something.”

Fitz stilled, and his eyes trailed to the name beneath Daisy's finger where it pointed at the screen. The entry read:

 _Dr. Donnan Fitz, PhD: on-site anthropologist, historian, and records keeper_.

Fitz swore.

His father had been part of the project, cataloguing the remains found during the excavation and studying the impact these findings had on current anthropological knowledge of the area.

“He's not my uncle,” was all Fitz could manage after an abnormal length of silence.

At Fitz' unusual reaction, Daisy quickly backtracked. “I wasn't...I mean, I was just joking. I didn't actually think he was your...hey, what is it? What's wrong? I wasn't trying to make fun of your name or anything. It's a good name.” Daisy joked nervously.

“He's not my uncle,” Fitz sighed, mussing his hair with one hand, “He's my dad.”

This response was met with a very loud silence.

“Wait,” Daisy said, “You're telling me this is your _dad_?  This...this man right here is your father? The one you said you haven't seen in years and had no clue where he'd gone?”

“Well, I _hadn't_ seen him in years...until I bumped into him last week in Morocco,” he admitted.

Daisy's eyebrows disappeared into her bangs. “You saw him? Last week?”

Fitz gave her a hasty, heavily edited recap of the encounter, eliminating most of the stuttering and shooting and running for his life. Daisy just sighed.

“What is it with this SHIELD and reuniting with your long-lost father?,” she muttered sarcastically, “Is anyone else missing one? Because I swear all they need to do is sign up for this team and they won't be able to keep 'em away.” She paused. “So are you going to call him?”

As much as Fitz didn't want to admit it, getting an audience with any of the other men who had worked on the archaological project would be hard and time-consuming. It would require an introduction, something compelling that would stand out from the cascade of scientific inquiries Fitz knew they received every day. Then he would likely have to work up to his questions, build a relationship with a stranger, and somehow manage to keep them invested in helping him while being unable to divulge too much information about the monolith itself. In other words, slow, methodical, and potentially fruitless.

His father, however—his father's attention he now knew he could get. And if all those years of anger and hurt were simply to build up a stockpile of leverage and guilt that Fitz could now wield to get the information he needed to save Jemma...well, he would now gladly accept them.

With a nod to Daisy, Fitz turned, pulling his phone out of his pocket and dialing his mother.

 


End file.
